Telehealth

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) will help small providers who use smart phones and other mobile devices learn how to easily secure them using simple steps explained in plain language.

With the highest mortality rate in healthcare and costing hospitals an estimated $180 billion each year, intensive care units (ICUs) are established regulars in the health IT reform spotlight.

The telemedicine and health IT camps need to overcome their traditional way of operating in silos and develop partnerships to make a significant impact on improving the quality of care in the healthcare system.

Many healthcare providers are nervous about using the cloud, but that may change soon, say industry analysts.

For nearly 2,000 care workers in Stockholm, a smart phone has become the most important tool in their daily operations. The goal is to make life easier for care workers and care providers and to give relatives access to various eServices that are provided via the city's website. City officials presented the solution in a World of Health IT session during the pan-European eHealth Week 2012 in Denmark.

Mobile health is poised to "explode" over the next decade, says Chad Udell, managing director of Float Mobile Learning, a mobile learning consulting, strategy and research firm based in Morton, Ill.

Chesapeake Regional Medical Center has rolled out a five-foot, automated disinfection robot named Tru-D (Total Room Ultraviolet Disinfection), part of a $2 million CDC grant awarded to Duke University for the prevention of healthcare-associated infections.

This past fall, as the academic year got under way, medical schools across the country, from Brown to Stanford, were tossing out heavy and expensive textbooks in favor of fully-loaded and interactive iPads. Now that spring is here, it's time for the iPad to graduate: moving out of the classroom and into the clinical setting.

HL7 – not just for IT anymore. That thinking is the catalyst behind a triptych of recent moves designed to open the standards process to more health professionals, notably caregivers.

Everyone in healthcare uses smartphones nowadays, but no one's quite sure what to do about them.